


The Wolf in the Roses

by Lobsterling



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game), Detroit: Evolution
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst, Asexual Character, BOTH, Both is good, Healing, How Do I Tag, Is It A Modern Au Or A Historical Au If The Original Is Set In The Future And The Fanfic Is Set Now?, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:02:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29685078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lobsterling/pseuds/Lobsterling
Summary: Nobody knows what tomorrow brings.
Relationships: Nines & Gavin Reed, Nines/Gavin Reed, Upgraded Connor | RK900 & Gavin Reed, Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed
Comments: 10
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JewelOfForest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JewelOfForest/gifts).



> TW: Moderate gore/wounds.  
> Thanks for the great idea (https://archiveofourown.org/works/29564205/chapters/72878829) to JewelOfForest :)

It was all he could think about. His body moved entirely of its own accord as his mind thundered, submerged. Shapes – trees – shook past him and, distantly, he could feel the earth hammering past at the tips of his limbs. His skin snatched on branches and thorns but the scratches were drowned in the pain that consumed his thoughts. _Get out_ , his deepest instincts screamed, their voices louder than the shrieks of his wounds. _Get out, get out, get out._

So he ran. Lungs steaming, mind screaming, he ran.

  
  


Rogan Kipling was not a particularly social man. He would have liked to be, perhaps in another universe where his life involved more people – but not this one. In this universe, he led a solitary existence in a small house on the outermost border between town and forest. Since his garden and poultry provided him with most of the food he needed, and he paid all his bills over the internet, there was little need for him to encounter other people but for the purchase of less growable things and natural fertilisers, and the occasional trip to the town’s library.

It suited him well. Every day was a quiet and comfortable routine. Walks in the woods and fields and working in his gardens kept him active, and books and research kept him intellectually occupied. The chickens were good company and Rogan found, without exception, that a stroll in the forest could always clear his mind and lift his spirits. There was not a season, weather nor time that this was not the case.

Until today, that was.

Today, his peaceful ambling led him straight to the jaws of trouble; jaws that were lined with sharp teeth and stretched into a frozen snarl.

The wolf was clearly unconscious. It was collapsed against a tree, its breathing barely visible, neck extended and paws reaching as though it had been trying to move forward until the very last moment of consciousness. Every inch of it spoke terror; its features were contorted, even in sleep, and its tail was lost between its legs.

Most shocking though, when you got past the fact that there was a wild wolf lying at your feet, were the wounds. Its dark fur was textured with streaks of blood, small lines across its legs and flanks, its muzzle smeared. And its hind left ankle was wrung and matted with the stuff, the fur lost in dark, glistening substance and the leaves and soil that clung to it.

Rogan considered. Four minutes later, he was carefully pushing his arms, sleeves rolled up, beneath the wolf’s chest and neck, and hoisting the animal off the ground. It was small, compared to what images Rogan had seen of wolves, but heavy, and supporting both its weight and its head proved to be far more difficult than expected.

The mile home took twice as long as it would have, had he left the wolf to its death in the leaf mould.

He would need a new tablecloth. That much was clear. It had taken all of his available dexterity to open the back door into the kitchen, and removing the tablecloth with a wolf in his arms had been one too many things to expect of himself.

He’d need a new shirt, too. If he’d put it in to soak at that moment, there might have been hope for it, but there were more important things to do. Taking a warm bowl of water and a clean rag, he drew up a chair and began to carefully clean the blood from the animal’s fur.

Taking it to a professional, he’d decided, was an impractical option. He did not own a car, and the nearest veterinary clinic was two towns beyond. Besides, his parents had been veterinarians so he was acquainted with the techniques, and three years of medical school hadn’t abandoned him yet.

Some time late into the night, he set down his apparatus and looked upon his work. It was not much, but it would do until he could travel into town the next day and get some more bandages.

The wolf’s eyelids flickered as he carefully lifted it onto a pile of blankets on the floor. Its lips twitched as he made sure it was in a safe and comfortable position. For a moment as he crouched beside it, the creature seemed unreal; its rippled deep brown fur and gentle breaths seemed to slow the very room into a stupor. Finally released from the focus of work, Rogan’s stomach lurched and a different canine lay before him, red and white curly hair and glassy, empty eyes.

A blink, and the wolf returned.

Rogan took the wolf’s head briefly in his hands and pressed a kiss to its forehead. “Don’t give up on me too.” The wolf’s ear twitched, and Rogan stood. He paused at the kitchen door. “Goodnight.”

Rogan woke in the morning to the remains of a troubling dream. Its details were already slipping away, but he knew he’d been back in his childhood home. He remembered an onset of dread and the struggle of vain hope as his name was called down formless corridors – _“Nines – Nines!”_ – and the use of his nickname stuck with him in waking. It had been months since anyone had addressed him, and he’d subconsciously reverted to using his original name for himself – but nobody knew him by it. Admittedly, though, very few people knew him at all.

It was the presence of the wolf in his house, thought Nines as he got up, that had given him such a dream. Briefly rearranging his mental calendar to make time for the animal, he dressed and headed down the stairs, ducking at the same two places he’d ducked for the last nine years, and approached the kitchen door.

Nines would have expected, if he’d been asked out of context, for the approaching revelation to dawn on him slowly. Perhaps it would take half an hour of bewildered shouting before it finally hit him, and he would stand there, stunned, before collapsing into the nearest chair, gobsmacked and mind full of desperate logical reasoning. The mere concept would haunt him for weeks, impossible to comprehend, thrilling and disturbing in equal parts.

As it happened, it went nothing like that.

Nines opened the kitchen door and shrieked; the dishevelled, dirty man on his floor snapped his head round to stare at him, eyes flaring wild with terror, and uttered a hellacious, primal snarl.

 _‘Well fuck,’_ thought Nines as he grasped the door frame with whitened fingers, his limbs cast plaster at this stranger's apparition. _‘There is a naked werewolf on my linoleum.’_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow brings pain, that's what.

The moment that strained between them was tense with terror. The no-longer-wolf’s eyes flashed but now he was silent, crouched on the floor as though ready to bolt at a split-second’s notice. His curly hair was a matted tangle and his face was rimmed with badly-cropped facial hair. His skin, completely exposed, was grimy and pale, dotted with fresh blood where cuts had reopened or failed to heal. If there had been any doubt as to his previously being the wolf, it was crushed by the fierce wound around his right ankle.

Nines stared, mouth half open. The man glared back.

Eventually, the stranger spoke. “Are you gonna say anything, or what?” His voice was gratingly coarse and his tone tinted with wary hostility. “Cos you’ve been standing there for–”

“Yes, sorry, I–” Nines shook his head, peeled his hands from the door frame. “I– I wasn’t sure… you could speak– I’ll get you some water.”

As he turned stiffly away, the stranger growled faintly deep in his throat.

Every sensation was heightened; the knock of the cupboard door closing, the rush of water from the tap, the weight of the smooth glass in his hand as he carried it back around the table to the man whom, he supposed, now counted as his guest. After a moment of holding his arm out with no response, Nines placed the glass on the floor and backed away again, unable to inhibit his staring. Gradually, the wolf reached forward a hand and raised the water to his lips, not taking his eyes from Nines for a single second. Only when he began to gulp it down did his gaze falter, his eyelids fluttering in satisfaction. Nines watched, transfixed, as the empty glass was returned to the floor and the stranger’s head bowed to take a breath. His eyebrows were drawn down far, shadowing his face, but still his eyes glinted sharply from beneath.

Nines filled another, larger glass and set it slowly upon the floor. It was rapidly consumed and while unthanked, it was obviously appreciated.

It was only when the stranger lifted his gaze, now avoiding direct eye contact, that Nines realised he should probably have offered some form of clothing first.

“Shall I– Get you some– Do you need–?” His hands gestured vaguely.

The werewolf nodded reluctantly, as though he hated accepting this flawed hospitality. “Yeah, yeah whatever.” His eyes dropped to Nines’ feet.

A brief hesitation preceded a swift exit; within thirty seconds Nines held an old set of clothes in his hands, but two minutes further were spent in frantic reflection. While cogs entirely reorganised themselves in his brain, he scrambled through plans and possibilities. How did one host a werewolf? Did they need raw meat? Specialist medical attention? How would one talk to them?

Lips pursed, he returned to the kitchen and dropped the clothes at the stranger’s side.

The man jerked at the sudden movement, then winced and curled in on himself. A few specks of blood glistened from his minor cuts as he bent. He hadn’t moved his legs an inch. He probed out a hand to retrieve the bundle and drew it into his defensive form, nose wrinkling with displeasure.

“I’ll get some band aids,” mumbled Nines, backing from the room. “They work better without fur.”

Carefully, Nines shut the door behind him and pressed his back to it. How on earth was he going to treat someone who wouldn’t take things from him, let alone accept touch?

It was then that he remembered the plasters were in the kitchen.

_God,_ it hurt. Everything hurt. His muscles like cooked meat, his ankle a rupture of pain, his pride a punctured hole. Just staying still made it hard enough to maintain a steady expression, so trying to pull on clothes had to be impossible.

But he sensed a serious threat in the human on the other side of the door – a human who looked like he might actually try to help someone get into a pair of boxers.

So he would do it himself. Suppressing every growl and whine of pain, he forced himself to move, dragging his failure of a foot round so he could conceivably shove it through a hole.

He’d had plans of leaving this stupid house as soon as possible. Plans of getting out the moment the human’s back was turned. Plans that did not hold up in face of the fact that he could barely sit without crying out, let alone stand.

So, gritting his teeth, he lifted his left foot and attempted to push it through both underwear and dull green shorts at once.

It took him four tries. While he saved effort by doubling up the clothes, the task of just raising an ankle turned out to be viciously difficult. The stormy tide of frustration rising up inside him, he restored to lifting the appropriate limb with one hand and maneuvering the cloth around it. It was stupid, ridiculously stupid to be struggling so much with such a simple task and his patience bore out only on the concept that the sooner he dressed, the sooner he could convince the lunatic who'd trapped him here that he was fine and could be on his way.

He had to be on his way. Staying stationary was a liability and if they got even a whiff of his scent, he'd be a trophy in waiting.

The fact that the clothes he was putting on smelled of this human didn't help. It was a combination of exotic plants, plastic library book covers and confident self-awareness. The mustiness from wherever they'd been stored did barely anything to block out such a pretentious scent.

It was ridiculous, anyway. He could barely say with confidence that his name was Gavin, let alone _who_ he was – except for a traitor. That much had been made clear. People who had it together simply disturbed him. As far as Gavin could tell, they possessed a grotesque unnatural power.

Wrinkling his nose, he glared at his right foot. The line of pain around the ankle glittered up at him and he growled at it, willing it to stop complaining. It was going to go through the shorts, whether it liked it or not.

Seven miserably stifled grunts later, the second foot was through the appropriate holes, and there came a voice through the door. “Would you like some help?”

Gavin felt the incredulity contort his own face – but a touch of smugness joined it. Humans were so predictable. People in general were basic and unchanging. “ _No_ ,” he returned, letting the disgust slime his tone.

“Okay,” came the quiet response.

‘People in general’ included him. Even as he slid himself across the floor towards the table, shorts around his knees, he knew he wouldn’t be able to stand these walls much longer. Over half a decade of unsheltered sleeping wasn’t going to abandon him overnight.

Clutching the t-shirt in one hand, Gavin reached up to brace his fingers on the table. Staying within an arm’s length of a chair, he screwed up his face and heaved.

The bark that left him was impossible to repress. His ankle had shrieked and his limbs had revolted and he was back down, cold floor on his skin. Actively wearing away his molars in his aggravation, he took a moment to recollect himself before trying again.

As he hauled himself slowly upward, he almost considered calling for help but the thought left his mind in an instant. He couldn’t allow himself to trust, no matter how ludicrously his body was behaving.

Finally upright – if you could call it that, bent over the table and shaking like a madman – Gavin dragged the shorts up the rest of the way. Even that was a challenge, but once it was done he dumped himself, as gently as his barely-contained irritation would allow, into a chair. His legs burned, his ankle blazed. Humans and their stupid clothes.

When he pried the t-shirt over his head, a hundred pathetic cuts whined in a discordant chorus. Now he was up, things seemed more possible. A minute of deep breathing later, he glanced to his right at the door the lunatic had left through, and to his left at a door with sunlight glinting through its panes.

After five minutes of suspicious silence, Nines opened the kitchen door. The room behind it was empty – and, blood on its handle, the back door hung open.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I never asked for any of this

He was lying on a path between two raised flower beds when the human found him.

Going down, it turned out, was no more pleasant than getting up. He'd managed to break his fall and avoid further injury, but the dirt path, studded with tiny angular stones, was no comfortable place to land or lie.

Staring up at the bright spring sky, he prepared himself to rise again and push on. The lunatic would notice his absence at any moment and he had to be gone before then.

Fairytale clouds blew gently above him, sickeningly peaceful while his existence hung on the brink.

“What are you doing?”

A head appeared in his view and Gavin twitched as the voice interrupted his planning. The human seemed honestly confused – and Gavin hated that he also sounded genuinely worried.

Resisting the urge to wriggle away, Gavin turned his glare on the pale, polished face.

“Saving both our skins.”

The human knelt beside him, cocking his head in what looked like quiet amusement. “By lying in my flower garden?”

“By leaving,” Gavin growled, forcing energy into his muscles. He tried to sit up but the lunatic dropped his knees into the dirt to propel himself closer and held a hand out towards Gavin’s chest – recoiling from the concept of contact, Gavin returned to the earth to avoid the touch, a small snarl twisting his face.

His ankle sparked in the motion, and he turned his aggressive gaze on it instead. The human followed.

“However much you want to, you're not going anywhere.” He sounded irritatingly sure of himself.

Gavin huffed, repressing the desire to snap at the lunatic’s closest available limb. The idiot had no idea what he was caught up in. If he did, he’d be shoving his ungrateful guest back into the forest where he’d found him.

“I can't stay here,” he said slowly, raising his head from the ground and briefly making eye contact to drive his point home.

But the human furrowed his brows and frowned. “Why not?”

Gavin shuffled to prop himself up on his elbows. “None of your business.”

The human’s eyebrows lifted and a slight smile of incredulity rose on his face. “I think, considering that I saved your life, and am trying to prevent you from tossing it away again, it is a small amount my business.”

Gavin gave up. “Fuck you,” he said, flopping back onto the earth. As he shut his eyes, he saw the human's lip twitch.

A moment later, there was the sound of movement. Gavin snapped his eyes open, ready to squirm out of reach – but the lunatic was striding back towards his house.

Frowning, he pulled himself onto his elbows again as the door slammed shut. Was that it? All he had to do was be insulting and the human would abandon him? Had he known that before, he would have used it much earlier.

Carefully, Gavin moved into a sitting position. If he could use the side of the raised flower bed to get up, he could be on his way in a few minutes.

He stared at the wooden border. His ankle throbbed but the pain was starting to numb, his body giving up on telling him it was hurt. With some effort and a voiced huff, he hauled himself up to sit on the flower bed’s edge and paused to weigh up his chances in each direction.

The forest contained the very thing he was avoiding; that way was out of the question. But the town’s humans were never going to let him wander around like this. The outskirts, he decided, were his best bet – but they would expect him to decide that. They’d not seen him without his tail yet, but his ankle was a dead giveaway.

Now he was no longer occupied with escaping the lunatic, the improbability of his survival waned on him. He deserved this fate, he knew - but that didn't make him any more eager to face it.

Survival was what he was good at. He’d been surviving all his life, against unnatural odds. He’d made it through everything, borne on a certainty that he would not die. Suddenly the thought that he’d finally fail now was overwhelmingly terrifying, and his breath caught.

There was a light thud to his left. He jerked away from it, snapping to look at what had made the noise. A small cardboard box lay by his feet.

A box with band aids in it.

Gavin looked up. The human was standing over him, irritation like mould on his expression. “If you won’t let me, you can do it yourself,” he said, and thrust a mug before Gavin’s face.

Gavin waited. The lunatic did not move.

Reluctantly, he took the mug, and the human sat down on the flower bed wall opposite.

“If you could avoid sitting on my hellebores, I would greatly appreciate it.”

Gavin stared. At the human, at the box, at the mug in his hands which was pleasantly warm. He sniffed it suspiciously.

“It’s not poisoned,” said the human. “If I wanted you dead I’d have just let you go.” A moment passed. “Unless you're allergic to tea.”

Gavin wrinkled his nose and took a sip.

“It’s disgusting,” he said, downing another gulp.

“Thought you’d appreciate it,” returned the lunatic, a smile hidden in his voice.

Trying not to burn his tongue, Gavin drank. It wasn’t perfect, but it had to be the first hot drink he’d had besides boiled water in over a decade. The concept of so long a time blustered through him and he shuddered. Tossed from one bad situation to the next, each consuming years of his life only for him to be spat out into another, coughing up blood.

He deserved this one, though. Maybe he’d deserved all of them. He wasn’t exactly prone to good will or charitable behaviour. He was prone to involving himself in dangerous situations, and betrayal.

When he looked up at the human’s combed brown hair and ironed shirt, the box of proffered band aids and the empty mug that remained warm in his hands, he wondered if two people could be any less alike.

“So you’re not gonna let me leave then.”

The human raised his hands and eyes briefly to the sky with a slight, sardonic smile. “Finally he understands.”

Gavin scowled and stared into the mug. Tea leaves clung to its base. Not only did this lunatic drink tea, he didn’t even use teabags.

“I don’t have a choice,” Gavin huffed, making sure it was understood that he wasn’t staying voluntarily.

“Naturally not.” The human reached forwards and Gavin absently put the mug into his hand. Lunatic it down on the bed wall beside him, saying, “I’m Nines by the way, if you care.”

Gavin scoffed. “Nines?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not a name,” he said, a laugh of cynicism disrupting his syllables.

“It’s what people call me, so it’s a name.”

“Which people?”

The human hesitated. “What people called me,” he corrected himself. “Back when I had people.”

Gavin sniffed. “Oh, well, that’s alright then.”

Turning his head a little, the human peered at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Only that you’re not gonna go preaching to your extended relations ‘bout how you’ve found a werewolf.” Gavin shrugged. “And that if the Ghost of Christmas Life-Threatening-Situations tracks me down again, only one person will be collateral damage this time.”

The human seemed torn between amusement and concern. At the mention of Gavin’s species, he’d gone momentarily stiff, but said nothing on it. His eyes flickered over his guest, catching on his old scars and new wounds.

Then, unannounced, he stood up. “Do you have any–” He faltered. “Dietary requirements?”

As far as questions about his supernatural condition went, it was distinctly tame. In fact, it was probably the least intrusive one Gavin had ever received.

Deciding to leave the complicated details of polymorphic digestion aside, Gavin said, “No.”

The human nodded. “Use those,” he said, pointing to the box at Gavin’s feet, “or you’ll stain that shirt too.”

Gavin glared at him, but he was already walking away, the mug swinging from his long fingers. Gavin realised his question hadn’t been mere curiosity.

“I hate onions!” he called after the retreating figure.

“Are you a vampire too?” The human didn’t look back as he shut the door behind him.

Gavin drew his head back and lifted his palms in despairing amusement. “That’s garlic,” he muttered. What kind of idiot had he ended up with, who had a number for a name and no problems being mixed up with a hunted werewolf? Wondering if extended time with this lunatic was any less life threatening than the forbidding alternative, Gavin tugged his shirt over his head.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Now we’re making progress.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Injury detailed, malnourishment.

Eggs cracked and sizzled angrily in the frying pan. Nines shuffled them about, half in the kitchen, half lost in his thoughts. He’d assumed to begin with that he’d only have to patch up his peculiar guest and send him on, but now he sensed an undercurrent of threat. Flipping toast in the grill, he considered his house and gardens, calculating their worth as shelter for one on the run. It was lucky, he supposed, checking the bacon as it cooked from frozen, that he lived in so isolated a position. Closer to civilisation and questions would be asked.

Steam hissed from the pan where a sliced tomato fried. Questions; deep beneath a carefully constructed wall in his mind, a tumult of frantic questions thundered and wailed. Questions he could not allow himself to ask, lest his sanity take the final hit. He flipped an egg.

Rogan Kipling was a logical man. Logical enough to see that logic had no place in this matter, and that survival of the mind depended on avoiding those scientific enquiries he so longed to address.

Using a towel to protect his hands, he removed the rack of toast from the grill and slid them slices fluently onto two plates on a tray. Pulling together his thoughts like drawing down threads of ribbon from all ends of the breeze, he assembled the food, dialing knobs down to zero as he went. With a final hiss, the pans fell silent and as he opened the door, the haze of steam began to clear.

Tray in his hands, Nines traced his paths to where the wolf man still sat, now stretching to reach a cut on his side. Nines placed the tray on the edge of the flower bed where he had sat before, and bent to collect the littering of plastic band aid backings the wolf hadn’t bothered to clear up, before the wind tugged the shivering curls away. As he stuffed them into his pocket, the wolf looked up at him with confusion and scorn. Sitting down, Nines wondered how long it had been since he’d lived in society.

The man’s nose twitched and his eyes darted to the tray. Nines passed a plate across the gap to him; shoulders hunched, hands tense around its rim, he stared at the food intently for several long seconds. It was hard to tell what he was thinking – this wasn’t the expression he’d made when inspecting the tea, but he stayed motionless, almost transfixed.

Then he dropped the plate on his knees and shoved an egg into his mouth.

Nines hadn’t bothered providing cutlery and it was clear that it wouldn’t have been utilised. This time, the wolf did little to hide his satisfaction, eyelids lowered and small grunts of appreciation interspersed among ardant chewing. His brows were drawn tightly down – Nines hadn’t seen them in any other position so far, but now the anger and distrust that had lowered them before was replaced with fierce concentration.

Nines let him eat for a minute. Even if he hadn’t seen him unclothed, his malnourishment would have been obvious. And with his shirt lying crumpled on the floor by his feet, his starved form was revealed once more, ribs stark and belly painfully slim. Despite his sturdy build and the impression he gave of solidity, the man was thin and brittle.

“Don’t eat too fast.” He’d never been unlucky enough to experience it first hand, but he’d heard of the damage that too much food could do to a deprived body.

The wolf briefly raised his eyes to glare at Nines, but slowed down anyway. He chewed on bacon, now clearly trying to resist swallowing it whole.

“How long has it been?” Nines watched his guest’s nostrils flare as he raised another fried egg in his fingers to his face. “Since you ate?”

The man froze briefly, before returning to his eager ingestion. For some time Nines thought he wasn’t going to reply.

“A while,” he said at length, words muffled by food.

“Right.” Nines nodded. “That’s helpful.”

That earned him another glare, which was cut off by a bite of toast.

“Can I at least know your name?”

The wolf’s chewing slowed and he dropped his hands to rest on the plate, the toast between them. Eventually, not looking up, he said, “Why do you care?”

Nines processed. Everything his guest said drove further evidence to the concept of troublesome experiences. “Why wouldn’t I?”

There was only the twitch of a nose for a response.

“You do have one, right?” The realisation that this person might never have been given a name spread over Nines’ skin, but the wolf sat up to look at him.

“Yeah,” he said. “I have a name. An  _ actual _ name, unlike you.”

Nines pressed his lips together as his guest hunched back over the emptying plate. “Well unless you want me to keep calling you Wolf Man then–”

The man gave a lacerated groan, throwing down his toast but not lifting his face. “Fine. Okay? Fine. It’s Gavin. There you are, go wild.”

Nines relaxed, somehow more at ease with this fibre of information. “Thank you, Gavin,” he said, attempting to drain the build-up of annoyance from his voice. “Now we’re making progress.”

“Progress?” scowled the man called Gavin. The  _ ‘what the hell?’ _ was evident in his tone. “Progress with what?”

Realising he’d made a mistake, Nines carefully thought through his response before speaking. He’d need Gavin’s trust in order to help him, and pushing for information was clearly achieving the opposite effect.

“You’re running from something,” he stated cautiously. Gavin tensed but did not object. “If I don’t know what you’re running from, I can’t help you avoid it. But, of course,” he added, “you have no obligation to tell me anything. As far as I’m concerned, the moment you’re healed and fit again, you’re no longer any of my business and you will pass from my life.”

For a very long few minutes, Gavin was silent. The remains of his toast lay on his plate and his head was bent, his face hidden. He took slow breaths, his bare back open to the sun and the uncovered cuts shining in the light.

At length, he raised himself a fraction and said, “Okay.” Nines thought he heard his voice catch, but his countenance was as firm and unyielding as ever. Gavin shoved an arm out toward the second plate on the tray, refusing to raise his eyes to Nines’ face.

“I think you’d better have a break,” Nines said, hoping he was right. “Besides, you haven’t finished that one.”

Gavin stared at the remaining toast and fried slices of tomato, and wrinkled his nose.

“You’re pretty picky for someone who’s starving.”

Gavin missed the jest in his voice. “I’ve been living on raw meat for a decade so the idea of eating plants is a bit weird to me, okay?”

_ Interesting, _ said a cold section of Nines’ brain. He shoved it beneath the wall in his mind.

“That’s reasonable,” he said, reaching for the half-empty plate. Gavin sat back to let him take it, letting out a short breath through his nose when Nines’ hand retreated.

Putting a slice of tomato in his mouth, Nines set the plate back on the tray. “Something needs to be done about your ankle,” he said, with what he hoped was confidence. Glancing at the ring of weeping red and slightly swollen foot, he had to make an effort to keep the tomato down. “You were lucky to get away with it so lightly, but it could still be dangerous. Leave it any longer and it’ll get infected, if it isn’t already.”

“I’ve had worse,” Gavin shrugged.

“Gavin,” said Nines, finding it unexpectedly odd to be saying someone’s name after so long, “You’ve been  _ snared. _ ” There wasn’t much worse one could survive than a snare.

Gavin stared at his ankle, twitching his toes with a visible wince. “Why does that sound like a really shitty insult?” he muttered.

Nines gave a huff of laughter. “I’m serious, it needs dealing with. It doesn’t look too deep, but necrosis is still a possibility.”

“Necrosis?” Disquiet surfaced in Gavin’s voice.

“Permanent death of tissue.”

A touch of alarm poked through the wolf’s diffident expression. “Okay,” he said, dropping his gaze back to his wound. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“Precisely.” Nines stood. “And as pleasant as the weather is…” He glanced around at his garden, neatly contained flower beds and tidy paths, the shed well maintained and the chickens cokcing their heads curiously at the new arrival to their regular world from the run against the wall of the house. On the other side of the back door, his extensive vegetable patches showed emerging greens of various forms, and between the house and the forest, fruit trees were springing with tender leaves. “We should treat it inside. It’s not exactly… aseptic, here.”

Gavin drew in a long breath. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Right.”

Nines studied him for a moment. He seemed more… resigned. “I have a walking stick, if that would help.”

Drawing his hands over his face, Gavin sighed. “Yeah.”

Nines carried the tray back into the kitchen, deposited the band aid backing into the recycling, and pulled the walking stick from where it had leant, untouched, against the living room wall behind his coats for years.

When he returned, Gavin had applied two more band aids to himself, and stuffed the backing back in the box.

Nines offered the stick; Gavin accepted, taking it halfway down, and paused, obviously considering how best to go about rising. Respecting the touch-aversion Gavin had made clear, Nines watched him helplessly.

Gavin hooked his fingers over the V-shaped fork at the top and braced his other hand on the flower bed wall. Ire smouldered in his expression as he inched himself upward, his right foot hovering above the ground. Halfway up, he hesitated again, his muscles subtly relaxing and tightening as he prepared to let go of the bed and transfer his entire balance to the stick. Nines saw his nose bunch up and his jaw clench.

Gavin let go of the wall, fumbled as he dragged himself up, and began to fall.

It was an instinctual reaction when Nines leapt to catch him, one hand to his shoulder and one to his arm as the wolf toppled. Any later and the crippled foot might have slammed into the floor in an attempt to regain balance – but supported by Nines, Gavin froze, unfallen, eyes an ocean of alarm. Two tense seconds shivered past; then Gavin frantically detached his fingers from Nines’ forearm and shuffled back, gripping the stick in both hands.

Nines let go of him. The panic clustered about Gavin’s form drove him away like a tide. Heart beating, Nines’ arms wavered before him. The feeling of cold, uneven skin and the profound shapes of bones beneath lingered on his palms. When he turned his hands over, a smear of blood lightly stained his fingers.

Gavin was staring at him, his pupils dilated, clutching the walking stick with white knuckles.

“I– I’m sorry,” Nine’s mumbled. “I didn’t mean–”

Gavin looked away so suddenly and purposefully that it cut Nines off. The wolf began to hobble towards the back door.

Nines took a step after him. “Can I–”

“Get my shirt.” His voice was tight.

Reassessing his desire to host this headache of a person, Nines went to retrieve the shirt – which was actually  _ his _ , on loan – picking up the box at the same time, and loitered within lunging distance as Gavin moved slowly down the paths.

As he held the door open, Nines offered his hand for the stick. It would slip on the smooth floor and there were worksurfaces to lean on inside – thankfully Gavin understood without need of an explanation, so Nines could continue to wallow in his silent embarrassment. Stowing the stick in the corner and the box on the counter, he closed the door behind them.

“Where?” Gavin’s voice was coarse.

“The table will do, I think.” Nines went to wash his hands and opened a window. The kitchen was still stuffy with the smell of cooked breakfast and lingering steam.

When he turned around again, rubbing his hands with a towel, Gavin was climbing to sit on the table using a chair as an intermediate step.

Nines retrieved the medical kit from where he’d left it the last night on top of the washing machine. He looked at the depleted materials, and at the pile of blankets on the floor. Bandages were scattered around the edges and in one corner, Nines thought he could see the irregular staining of vomit.

Shuffling on the spot, both of his feet now on the chair, Gavin cleared his throat faintly. It wasn’t an attention seeking sound – more one of mental adjustment – but it drew Nines’ notice nonetheless; filling a glass with water and placing it on the table beside his patient, Nines set the kit on the floor and moved the kitchen's stool to Gavin’s feet.

Toes tensed. Nines looked up at Gavin, who was grasping the edge of the table and staring stolidly down at his wound. Before the fall it had felt like they’d been moving towards some kind of understanding, but now the wolf had retreated behind his hide. Nines released a long, quiet sigh, vexation mingling with an aching wondering about how he’d come to be this way.

As he filled a bowl with hot water and got out a suitable cloth, he endeavoured to recover the measly trust he’d gained before. “What happened to the bandages?”

Gavin watched Nines place the bowl on the chair by his feet. After downing half the glass of water, he turned to wrinkle his nose at the sullied blanket nest. “They might have fit when you put them on, but this morning – not so much.”

Nines imagined teeth in the dark, frantically tearing at his secure work, as he sat down. There were aspects of this… alternate biology which hadn’t occurred to him before.

For example, the fact that he’d sutured up the wound before him last night, and the stitches were no longer there.

Now that he was looking, he could see vertical tears in the flesh where the stitches must have torn through the skin as it expanded – but not nearly as vicious as he would have expected, given the significant increase in leg size.

“That’s curious,” he muttered, mostly to himself.

Gavin gulped another mouthful of water down and said, “What?”

“My stitches have disappeared.” There should at least have been the remnants still stuck in the wound. The dissolvable sutures he’d used wouldn’t have degraded for at least five weeks.

“Oh,” said Gavin, with a thin coating of bitterness. “So that’s what the stinging and sizzling was.”

Nines winced. If he’d  _ known _ the animal he was treating would transform into a cantankerous human he wouldn’t have used long-lasting techniques. But there was no way Gavin could have warned him either. “Sizzling?”

“I don’t know.” The rough texture returned to his tone. “It burned. More than everything else anyway.”

For a few seconds, Nines let his hive of thoughts process that; something in the process of changing form must have sped up the deliquescence of the stitches; then he shut off the scientific units of his mind and focused on the task at hand.

Whatever had happened, it hadn’t been quite fast enough. The original snare wound had, while not too deep, been a somewhat ragged ring, but the wound now was forked and fractured with the sutures’ tears. It would be a much harder job the second time round; significantly so if the patient wouldn’t let him touch it.

“I don’t know how I can do this without–”

“What do I do.”

Mid-syllable, Nines stopped. A moment of calculation later, he shut his mouth. “You can start off by washing it again, since you were so eager to rub dirt all over it on your way out.”

Gavin glared in his general direction, but reached for the cloth and dunked it in the bowl.

“Only just damp,” Nines said, as Gavin lifted the waterlogged fabric from the bowl. “And don’t touch the injury with your hands.”

With another scowl, Gavin squeezed – hesitated, and after no further interjection from Nines, moved the cloth to his ankle.

Nines watched carefully, alternating between making sure Gavin was performing the task correctly and observing his face, looking for the signs of discomfort beneath the drystone wall of choler.

He had been told he was predisposed to empathy, but years without extended human interaction had worn down his skills and left him in great need of practice. It didn’t help that the first person he’d sustained a lengthy conversation with after that time was adamantly keeping everything to himself, including his pain.

Without a means of effectively and safely anaesthetising his patient, Nines would have to be able to tell when he was causing more discomfort in order to minimise it. Thankfully, Gavin was too occupied with his work to notice Nines studying him.

When at last the cloth was dropped conclusively into the bowl, Nines thought he’d built a fairly good understanding of which muscles in Gavin’s face twitched in response to pain.

“What now.” Gavin stared at the bowl, but his gaze was unfocused.

Nines took the bowl to the sink to replace the water. “Now,” he said slowly, “you wash it again. You use antiseptic this time, and make absolutely certain there is nothing stuck in the wound.”

He returned the bowl to the chair, dropped a new cloth into it, and filled a plastic tub with the remaining boiling water from the kettle. He extracted a needle from a sealed packet in the medical kit and placed it in the tub.

“Then you suture it up, stitch by stitch, taking care to leave the right distance on each side of the wound, using your experience and wisdom to know how deep and far to go, until the flesh is pulled together at just the right tension – not to tight, not too loose – before dressing it appropriately so the whole thing is held neatly in place and protected from the elements; and, more importantly, bacteria.”

He turned around from washing his hands again, blinking sweetly. Gavin looked a lot less sure of himself now.

Returning to the stool, Nines dropped his jive and looked up at Gavin sincerely.

“So,” he said, watching the indecision already fluttering like a wind-disturbed birch on Gavin’s face, “do you want to do it, or shall I?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ease your breath, Untie my hands  
> Release my neck, If you can  
> You don’t have to be like that

Gavin stared at a point somewhere between the human’s head and his own fucked up ankle. Every time he thought this whole situation couldn’t get any more uncomfortable, the lunatic produced some new way to prove him wrong. The look he was giving him, steady and expectant, was neither demanding nor impatient.

Wondering how long it would take for the lunatic to snap, Gavin waited. But several minutes passed, and the only change was expectation fading faintly from the human’s face. Eventually, he began to move on his stool, about to stand.

Gavin panicked. He saw the lunatic walking away, leaving his wound untreated. He saw himself cast back into the world, dying of infection or beaten to death or trapped in another snare with gleeful faces leaning down, felt his throat sliced and his skin torn away.

Any other situation and he would never have done it. Any other time and he would have taken his chances and stitched it himself.

He moved his left foot out of the way to grant the human access to his wound. 

Leaning back, shoulders shoulders stiff as ancient oaks, he glared at his swollen toes, cursing himself more than ever for having walked into the hunters’ trap. In the edge of his vision, he saw the human pause, watch him closely, and slowly settle himself onto the stool again. As he reached into the box of medical stuff on the floor, Gavin searched desperately for something to occupy himself with – and found, to a small smattering of feeble relief, the tray of food on the table behind him. He yanked it closer and snatched up a piece of bacon from the untouched plate, raising it to his mouth as he turned back around.

The human was wearing blue surgical gloves as he squeezed water out of the cloth. Gavin had a fraction of a moment to internally mock how stupid it looked before plasticy fingers touched his foot and all his systems froze.

However ridiculous they were, he could be grateful that the lunatic had those gloves on. Even though the rubber-smoothed half-heat of the human’s hands shattered his pulse into a nervous skittering, compared to the burning terror he still felt of bare skin on his shoulders, it was endurable. But the physical pain of his wound was muffled by psychological discomfort.

A minute in, Gavin managed to take a bite of the bacon. He concentrated on it as he chewed to the point that it felt abstract in his mouth. He ate slowly, lost for ideas of how he would distract himself once the edible food ran out.

And his tactical distraction was made significantly harder by the fact that the lunatic kept looking at him. Gavin refused to acknowledge it, but it joined the swarm of confusion crawling under his skin. He’d never eaten so slowly and meticulously in his life.

Time began to pass strangely, bunched in twisted messes and stretched out between. When the human sat back, placing a bottle back in the box, Gavin couldn’t tell how much had passed. And when the human stood, he thought for a deluded moment that the torture was over. But the lunatic retrieved a curved needle from the tub on the counter and returned to his stool – it had barely begun.

“Are you likely to be–” The human hesitated, so briefly it was barely noticeable. “–Changing, over the next couple of weeks?”

That, at least, was easy to answer. It was bad enough wearing such a recognisable injury – there was no way he was going to go walking around in the skin which certain humans wanted to decorate their floor with. He was sick of that form anyway, and this lunatic didn’t seem likely to have a supply of fresh meat – unless he sacrificed the chickens – so he would starve if he spent any more time in it. “Hell no.”

“In that case,” muttered the lunatic, leaving his sentence unfinished as he bent back to root around in his supplies. He drew out a small card box, pulled a packet from it, and a packet from inside that. A moment later, thread was attached to the needle. Gavin clenched his jaw.

The human looked up, the needle now held in a metal tool. “Tell me when it hurts.”

Gavin let out a strained noise that might have been a laugh, if a stranger weren’t about to sink a tiny sharp stick into his leg. “Are you kidding?”

The human seemed about to say something else, but shook his head. “Never mind.”

It wasn’t the first time Gavin had had stitches – not by far – so he knew what to expect. But nothing could prepare you for it. Starting to feel slightly sick, he abandoned the food and curled his fingers around the edge of the table.

The human bent over his ankle, but paused and looked up again. “You know it isn’t illegal to express pain, right?”

Gavin scoffed and started to say, “What?” but a pinpoint of pain cut him off and he bit through his own grunt a second too late. His foot would have jerked, but the human’s firm hold kept it still. Fighting back claustrophobia, he snarled silently at the sadistic doctor’s bent head.

“If you let it out vocally, you’re less likely to move and endanger my precision,” the lunatic continued, his calm, matter-of-fact tone mixing discordantly with a second sting.

Gavin dared to look down, and saw the human tying a knot in the twine with a long metal instrument in each hand before he had to look away from the mess of his leg.

“Then again, if you make any noise, it will be your pride that’s ruined,” persisted the human, “and that’s a much less desirable outcome than a permanently crippled limb.”

As a new stitch was tied, Gavin growled a noise halfway between human and beast.

“That’s better,” said the lunatic brightly. “You’ll get the hang of it in no time.”

Another stitch and another growl – this one a fraction more monster. “I hate you,” he snarled between clamped teeth.

“Well, there are no surprises there.” The people who had stitched him up before had been sluggish, clumsy compared to this human’s fox-like dexterity. “After all, why would I expect anything less than undiluted contempt from someone I am sheltering, and saving from further tissue trauma, infection and death?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Gavin barked, hiding yelps of pain in his raised voice.

“Only that I’m beginning to realise you don’t actually go any deeper than ‘ungrateful fury’.”

Gavin shook his hands, fingers curled and clenched towards his palms. “What are you _doing_?” he yelled, the confusion under his skin steaming off him in clouds.

The lunatic paused and looked up at him, eyebrows raised. “Distracting you. It’s working, isn’t it?”

As the human raised his face, Gavin shifted his glare to the ankle to see stitches creeping round half of the wound. He fumed. It _was_ working.

“Lift your foot.”

Gavin was too stunned to disobey.

The human stood and rotated the chair so its back didn’t block the untreated side, shuffling his stool round with his feet. He sat again, and the stabbing resumed. “Stay still,” he said a stitch later.

“You are impaling me continuously.” Gavin tried to uncoil his toes and failed. “What do you expect me to do?”

“I expect you,” said the lunatic, unmoving but for his hands, “to express it vocally. You can do some interpretive art if you must, but your resources are limited to _finger_ and _air_.”

“I hate you,” Gavin seethed.

“Keep saying that.” The lunatic shuffled under the table and moved Gavin’s foot forwards. He seemed to have no worries at all about how weird he was being. “Let it out.”

Gavin’s nostrils flared and his forehead burned with rage. “I _hate_ you.”

“Good. I hate you too.”

“How are you saying that so calmly?” Gavin shoved his hands into his hair where the fingers got snagged in the impenetrable knots.

The lunatic emerged from the table on the other side. “Lift,” he said, and rotated the chair again as Gavin raised his foot. He looked up seriously, catching eye contact before Gavin managed to glance away. “Practice.”

Gavin felt his face clench. “Practice didn’t do shit for me.” He thought the stitching was done, but the human began to go around again, adding intermediate ringlets of pain to the previous ones.

“Clearly you didn't have enough motivation, then.”

Fighting the urge to kick the lunatic in the head with his functional foot, Gavin boiled. “You can’t say if I had enough motivation. I was _there_ , you weren’t.”

“It’s the logical conclusion.”

Gavin felt his skin being gradually tugged back together. “I hate to break it to you, smartass, but life ain’t logical. Hiding from the world in a hut with chickens doesn’t change that.”

The human took a long, regulated breath and it was half a minute before he spoke again. Gavin could tell he’d hit a nerve, and revelled in his victory. The chair was turned.

“When was the last time you washed?” The lunatic wiped at a trickle of fluid. Gavin glanced down to see that his ankle and the top of his foot were the cleanest parts of him.

“I take it you don’t count times that didn’t involve a bath,” he glowered.

“Anything with running water.”

“Oh well in that case, two days ago.”

The human glanced up, brow furrowed.

Gavin leaned forwards. “It rained.”

Shaking his head, the human returned to his work with a slight curl of the lip. “I hate you.”

“And _now_ you mean it,” Gavin crowed. “You gotta be honest, human.”

About to pass under the table again, the lunatic paused. “Are you really that averse to using my name?”

Gavin scowled. He didn’t understand how the human was so comfortable immediately calling someone by name. “It’s a _number_ ,” he said.

The human glared, and ducked out of sight. Silence returned, and with it came the awareness of pain. Grunting, Gavin decided to find out if he could scratch a permanent mark on the underside edge of the table.

Without the lunatic’s gibes, time began to slow and each loop of thread became a node of torture. When at last the human sat back with a low “There,” Gavin had splinters underneath his fingernails.

“Are you done?” he gritted.

“Yes,” said the human, dropping the needle and remaining thread into a segment of the medical box. Given how long the thread had been, he must have replaced it at some point during the stitching, but it had somehow passed under Gavin’s notice. With a final few wipes to the weeping wound, the human stood and began to clear up.

Gavin stared at his ankle. He hated to admit that the stitches were neat.

“I must have some more dressings somewhere,” the human was saying, pulling off his gloves. “Stay here.”

Gavin made a face. “Where would I _go_?”

The human ignored him, and left the room. There was the sound of creaking stairs and footsteps across a room with wooden floorboards. The whine of doors, discontinuous steps. Gavin tried to picture what the lunatic was doing while he waited, picking the wood from beneath his nails.

Time dragged on. Through the chunk he could see of the glass-paned back door, he watched the sunlight grow dull over flowers and trees, and silently return.

There was a muffled “Ah!” and Gavin jumped. Some more shuffled footsteps and a pause later, the floorboards sounded, the stairs moaned and the door spat a considerably dustier Lunatic back into the kitchen. He was holding a small cardboard box under one arm and a single cobwebbed crutch in the other hand.

“The attic holds many treasures,” he said, leaning the latter against the table by Gavin and setting the box down on the floor.

“Where did you get a crutch?” Gavin picked a thick strand of cobweb from its wooden frame. “And why is there only one?”

The lunatic looked up and Gavin forced himself to meet his eyes. There was an expectant pause. “None of your business.”

Gavin groaned. This man was insufferable.

“And the same to you too,” said the human, brushing himself off and carrying the dirty equipment to drop it in the tub by the sink. He washed his hands again, more thoroughly than was surely necessary, and returned to the stool to open the cardboard box.

It had a distinct scent of attic retirement. Even though they were sealed in plastic bags, Gavin had trouble believing the bandages were clean with how musty they smelled. The human pulled on a new set of surgical gloves, extracted one of the bags, and opened it.

“Hold this here,” he said, pressing a wad of material as white and fluffy as childish fantasies against each side of the ankle. Gavin suppressed a hiss, the pressure highlighting the knots of thread, and carefully took over holding the dressings, avoiding the human’s fingers.

With a roll of bandage, the human began to wrap up the wound, directing Gavin to hold this down, and move his fingers there, and lift his foot, as he passed the material around and around.

When he was done, the ragged ring of rifted flesh was totally concealed under a firm layer of white bandages. Gavin risked flexing his toes, which stuck out at the end with the ball of his foot, and little shocks scattered up his leg. But wrapped up as it was, it felt more secure, somehow more comfortable under the even pressure.

As he turned his leg to look at the result from different angles, the human cleared up, sweeping packets and used utensils into a plastic bag and sealing it off, snapping the medical box shut and placing both it and the cardboard box of bandages back on the washing machine, emptying the bowl of water and scrubbing it out.

Once he was done, he watched Gavin for a moment. “You’re welcome,” he said.

“Yeah, right,” muttered Gavin, distracted. “Thanks.”

The lunatic was lucky his raised eyebrows were only noticed just as the expression disappeared. Gavin scowled, and reached for the crutch, shoving the chair round again and shuffling along the table so he could let himself down onto the floor. Once his left foot was against the cool ground, his right toes resting lightly on the fake tiles, he took to peeling dust-thickened cobwebs from the crutch.

“Sorry about that,” said the human with a smile, drying his hands on a towel. He must have washed his hands yet again. “I don’t think that’s been moved since I put it in the attic a decade ago.”

Gavin rolled his shoulders, brushing off the crutch’s main length and testing its height. A decade ago… God, during the time this lunatic had been living in one house, Gavin had changed homes and passed through different sections of trouble four times. He wasn’t sure if that made him feel more old, or more incapable of sustaining a steady lifestyle.

None of his lifestyles had been worth sustaining though. Perhaps it was better to have passed through multiple ways to live badly, than be stuck fast in one of them alone. At least there was variety that way.

“It’s about the right height,” the human observed, actually putting a hand to his chin in thought, the other on his elbow. He was a walking cliché. “Once you lose the slouch, it’ll fit you perfectly.

Gavin glared at him, but he was right. He just wasn’t very used to walking on two legs, crippled or not.

Deciding the state of the crutch was good enough, he shoved it under his arm and leant his weight on it. A rubber pad on its base prevented it from slipping on the smooth floor, and pads around the hand and armpit crossbars made it marginally less painful to use. An irrepressible wave of solace swept up through him as he took an aided step away from the table, arm half-raised in case he fell.

He could _walk_. He could move on his own, without anyone having to wait around to catch him. He could leave right now, if he wanted, and walk right away from this house.

“I’ll need to take the sutures out in around two weeks,” said the human, leaning against the table and looking annoyingly pleased. “And the dressings need changing every now and then. But you’re done for now.”

He wouldn’t have made it far anyway. But two whole weeks seemed like an immensely long time to be shut up as an invalid under the care of a mad doctor. Technical skill was irrelevant – the lunatic was definitely mad. Nobody in their right mind would take an injured werewolf into their care, especially when that werewolf was Gavin. There was no possible way Gavin’s presence could benefit the human, so he had to be mad.

“Do you need anything else?” The lunatic shifted on his feet. “A wash, perhaps?”

Gavin stared at his grimy stomach and filthy limbs. He’d gone longer without a shower than this sorry house had put up with its current owner, so he wasn’t about to die of dirtiness. Then again…

“I’ll get you some water,” said the human. Gavin furrowed his nose – was he that easy to read? “Showering won’t be a good idea for a while, so you can wash the traditional way outside. Though–” He paused as a large plastic bowl filled under the kitchen tap, and his voice softened thoughtfully. “I suppose that’s not so unusual for you.”

“It’s very unusual,” said Gavin, taking slow steps towards the back door. “I haven’t touched soap in years. I might have an allergic reaction.”

“I’ll keep it separate then, in case.” The human reached into a cupboard under the counter and brought out a small, square dish. He deposited a bar of soap in it and held it out.

Gavin took it, relaxing. His insincerity had been missed – perhaps he wasn’t so easy to read after all.

“The orchard is the closest optimal place,” said the human, rummaging in a drawer. “Straight down the path, lots of wiggly little trees. It’s hard to miss. I’ll bring the water out to you.”

Gavin hesitated, soap dish in one hand, crutch in the other. The urge to leave this house and just keep walking still stirred inside him.

Using his armpit on the crutch to hold him up, Gavin opened the door and set off towards the orchard, wondering if there would be anything to sit on while he washed.


End file.
